I have a friend who took his little six-year-old boy fishing with him one day. They put out the line and then went up to the cabin. After an hour, they went back down to the river to see if they had caught anything.

Sure enough, there were several fish on the line. The boy said, "I knew there would be, Daddy."

The father asked, "How did you know?"

He replied, "Because I prayed about it."

So they baited the hooks again and put out the line and went back to the cabin for supper. Afterward, they went back to the river; again, there were fish on the line. The boy said, "I knew it."

The father said, "How?"

"I prayed again."

So they put the line back into the river and went to the cabin. Before bedtime, they went down again. This time there were no fish.

The child said, "I knew there wouldn’t be," and the father asked, "How did you know?"

The boy said, "Because I didn’t pray this time."

The father asked, "And why didn’t you pray?"

And the boy said, "Because I remembered that we forgot to bait the hooks." (Robert Goodrich, What’s It All About. James Hewitt, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 1988), p. 420).